American Management Association (AMA) named him one of the Leaders to Watch in 2015. The editors of Ziff-Davis Enterprise named him one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Technology alongside leading entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Larry Page, and others. Trust Across America-Trust Around the World (TAA-TWA) named him one of the Top 100 Thought Leadersalongside global leaders such as Bill George, Tony Hsieh, Doug Conant, Howard Schultz, and others.

Extended Bio

What sets Faisal apart is the unique position and perspective he has always maintained, which is grounded in a hardcore technology with deep roots in leading-edge management science and mindful entrepreneurship. His intense curiosity has always led him to explore disruptive approaches to solving complex business problems.

Over the last two decades, he has played a variety of roles including CEO, Chairman of the Board, and an advisor to F500 boards and management. He has architected customer/partner/joint-venture/business transformational relationships with cross industry, private and public sector global brands such as GE, MasterCard, American Express, Northrop Grumman, PepsiCo, IBM, Home Depot, Netscape, Infosys, French Social Security Services, Gartner, Cambridge Technology Partners, JP Morgan Chase, CSC, and others.

At the age of only 14, he began what would be the first of many businesses; cobbling together stereo components to sell from his father’s home in Dhaka, Bangladesh in order to save the money he would need to support his plan to study in the United States.

He built his first commercial software product at the age of 19 while studying at the University of Minnesota, and went on to hold management positions in Pitney Bowes and then Dun and Bradstreet. In 1991, Pitney Bowes recruited him to join one of their R&D groups before he finished his undergraduate degree. At Pitney and Dun and Bradstreet, he worked on cutting-edge analytics and decision support methods and systems for customer intelligence, sales effectiveness, and revenue optimization before CRM/ERP, Sales Automation, and Business Intelligence were hardly concepts.

As a serial entrepreneur, he has raised venture capital from angels, strategic partners, and institutional investors to fund his innovative business-to-business startups. Over the decades, his companies innovated products and solutions that: provided middleware software for complex, secure transaction processing; created industry’s first set of re-usable software components for integrated B-to-B e-commerce; and pioneered comprehensive business value management frameworks and platforms.

In 1994, GE recruited him, then one of its youngest technology executives, to launch one of the industry’s first comprehensive B2B electronic commerce spin-offs, leveraging his innovation from one of his startups.

As a thought leader, he has written several books on management, innovation, leadership, creativity, and entrepreneurship; established a research think tank in collaboration with leading academics from around the globe. He has become an authority on entrepreneurship, mindful leadership, innovation, creativity, transformation, and sustainable growth. His research leadership created several financial indices and methods such as the Convergence Index, Business Agility Index, Sustained Innovation Index, and Operational Excellence Index that measure the correlation between management maturity improvement and organizational financial performance. For his commitment to business-technology convergence, CIO Quarterly magazine designated him “Mr. Convergence”.

His book, The Power of Convergence (published by the American Management Association [AMA]), was released in April 2011 and almost immediately was named “One of the Best Business Books of 2011” by 800CEOREAD and CIO Insight. Two of his previous books, Sustained Innovation and Winning the 3-Legged Race, were also included in the “Top 5 Transformation Books” of the last few years, while Sustained Innovation also ranked in CIO Insight magazine’s “Editor’s Picks: The 10 Best Business Books of 2007”.

Thousands of people follow Faisal on social media. His work is frequently shared globally by entrepreneurs, executives, corporations, academia, educators, and celebrities alike. See highlighted followings at the social media section of Faisal’s website. Also review:

Some of these articles written by Faisal have been read by as many as 80,000+ readers.

Faisal Hoque is a frequent public speaker at entrepreneurship conferences, innovation forums, business schools, and leadership summits. His talks are focused on entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, leadership, mindfulness, and social impact. Notably, the CEO Summits at the NY Stock Exchange, Global China Summits, Forbes Business Leadership Forum, Sino-American CIO Summit in Beijing, European CIO Summit in Monte Carlo, MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership, Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit, BOOTH School of Business – Entrepreneurial Ventures, CFO Magazine Technology Summit, Chief Executive Magazine CEO Roundtables, and Yale School of Management CEO Summits, among others. His most recent speaking engagements include the Royal Society of Arts, London and the Mexico National Entrepreneurship Week, Mexico City.

Faisal Hoque was chosen as one of the top 25 speakers for 2016out of 1,300 thought leaders at SPEAKING.com. Over 25,000 votes were cast and he ranked number 10 among the honorees. Other honorees include: Simon Mainwaring, Kevin Harrington, Dr. Travis Bradberry, Allison Massari, Scott Amyx, Carey Dunai Lohrenz, Muhammad Yunus, Daymond John, Mark C. Thompson and Liz Wiseman. See highlighted speaking engagements on Faisal’s website.

A lifetime student of Eastern philosophies, he holds a strong belief that it is through knowledge sharing of our experiences that we may provide the greatest clarity on how to improve our collective future. His blog got named as one of The Best Entrepreneurship Blogs for 2017 (ranked #1) – “Entrepreneur Faisal Hoque’s blog is packed with great tips for aspiring small business owners, but his psychological tips for staying strong under pressure and in the face of failure are a real standout.”